Magic angle twisted graphene hosts low energy flat band as a result of interlayer hybridization. In the flat band Coulomb interaction is large relative to the bandwidth, promoting a collection of correlated insulating (CI) states at commensurate partial band filling, superconducting (SC) phases with dome-like structure, ferromagnetism and even…

The DAMIC (Dark Matter in CCDs) experiment uses silicon charge-coupled devices (CCDs), traditionally employed for imaging purposes, to detect potential ionization signals from dark matter interactions. These approx. mm thick devices feature an impressively low leakage current (< 10-21 A/cm2) and a very low energy threshold (40 eVee), making…

Macromolecular protein complexes perform essential biological functions across life forms. The assembly of such complexes is known to be regulated at the level of gene transcription, but little is known about the factors that control their assembly once the mature protein subunits enter their target space (cytoplasm, membrane, or cell wall)…

 I will discuss topological classification of gapped many-body Hamiltonians and their ground states in dimension d. In general, the problem is too hard as it includes diverse phenomena such as degenerate ground states on the torus, anyons, and fractons. There is, however, hope to fully understand short-range entangled, or "invertible" systems,…

Dark matter is one of the greatest puzzles facing physics today. Our attempts to find a dark matter particle have so far come up empty-handed, and the theoretical models that have guided these efforts for the last 30 years are increasingly suspect. We still have few clues as to its nature. In this talk, I will explore two new and complementary…

We will prove a conjecture [1] on upper bound of asymptotic gap in dimension in unitary compact 2D CFT, proving it to be 1 using a "extremal" function [2]. The notion of asymptotic gap can be generalized to (h, \bar{h}) plane [3]. We will discuss how the extremal function used in [2] can be put into a bigger (natural) framework of an extremal…

The Andromeda galaxy is the closest spiral galaxy to us. It harbors a massive dark matter halo which may span up to ∼600 kpc across and comprises ∼90% of the galaxy’s total mass. This halo size translates into a large diameter of 42 degrees on the sky for an M31–Milky Way distance of 785 kpc, but its presumably low surface brightness makes it…

Atoms and molecules in the ultracold regime have emerged as promising platforms for quantum simulation of strongly-correlated matter.  In this talk, I will describe recent progress on two fronts to study quantum many-body physics with ultracold gases.  First, using ultracold fermionic atoms…

 Liquid xenon (LXe) is employed in a number of current and future detectors for rare event searches. In this talk, I will present the latest results from EXO-200, which searched for neutrinoless double beta decay (0υββ) in Xe-136 between 2011 and 2018. I will also present a measurement of the absolute scintillation and ionization response…

Every astrophysically realistic simulation needs accurate initial data and in this talk I will present methods to obtain such solutions for a variety of problems. In particular I will focus on a new initial data formulation to solve the full set of Einstein equations for spacetimes that contain a black hole under general conditions. As an…

Organisms are an evolutionary masterpiece of feedback control, featuring a mind-boggling capacity to self-correct. In this talk, we discuss our attempts to both understand feedback control in cells and to forward engineer it with de novo designed proteins.

Very light axions are a generic prediction of string compactifications. If cosmic strings associated with these axions were produced in the early universe, they quickly approach a so-called scaling solution, such that strings persist in the sky today.  I will present some remarkable signals of such strings coupled…